The Spanish expo proved a good launching pad for Samsung's latest ideas and products. The Asian company do their best to bury the reviewers under an avalanche of announces and press releases, just like they did in Hannover. A certain tendency surfaces: the key points of an upcoming strategy are usually announced in February, often overwhelming the public with unexpected decisions and policy changes accompanied by numerous releases, dozens of them! Then comes CeBIT, carrying the second half of the shot. This year the old story went another round just like expected: 3GSM Congress was flooded with Samsung announces. The new strategy and the new products, a lot of unexpected just as it was expected. Of course it's a bit early to predict the same amount of announces coming at CeBIT - but knowing Samsung's habits of strategy planning, we could expect another massive strike of new Samsung products then as well. Let's get back to Barcelona, though.

New Strategy Points

The Samsung Company decided to enter the year of 2008 with a new portfolio which were split into a number in full accordance with the official Samsung classification, maybe a bit obscure to the strangers. The whole range of Samsung products are due to sorting by this principle in the nearest future.

Style - these are the fashion phones, the main selling points of which are the exquisite design and unique features, the typical specimen are Samsung Soul and Samsung F480.

Infotainment - these are multifunctional phones with little regard to the exterior looks, mainly focused on versatility. So far, G810 is the only model explicitly classified as such.

Multimedia – the multimedia class comprises pureblood music and music-imaging combo phones, depending on the complexity and positioning of models. The typical representatives are F400 and F490.

Connected – a gadget drawing its power from the web services. Just like the name suggest, this class of phones is actively promoting various web services like mobile blogging and so on, a good example of such a handset is the L760 model.

Basic – these are but regular phones that don't do much besides dialing and messaging, one of them being B100.

Business – the title is quite self-explaining. The class is represented by such models as i780, i200, i550, i560, i620.

It's easy to guess that a number of products seem to belong to a number of classes simultaneously. For instance, the F480 model is officially associated with the style class, however it's so rich in multimedia features that it could stand in Multimedia just as well. The deciding factor is positioning and the selling points underlined in the advertisement campaign. A question arises, what impact will this classification produce on the already established families of Samsung products? For instance, what will happen to Ultra, LaFleur or BeatZ? The most likely answer is that they won't get rebranded, reclassified or leave the scene, but rather just officially given different class labels while still forming the easily recognizable product groups with their own names. The advertisements will be largely focused on the family names of these products, however the individual members of such families will be dispersed between different market segments. In this sense, the new classification will play the role of a backbone with additional categories sprouting in all directions, depending on the company's current intentions to sell a particular model to a particular consumer group.

The Soul model is the biggest Samsung's blockbuster at this expo, being the ultimate leader of the Ultra series. Samsung's recent ascension to power started right after the Ultra handset were announced. It was Motorola who inspired a worldwide love for slim handsets. Then it was Samsung who made this tendency universal for all kinds of portable communication devices, be it a PDA or a fashion slider. Now the once thriving fashion is dying out, so the consumer begins to prefer more functionality, increasingly neglecting the slimness factor. Trying to keep up with the time, Samsung introduced a powerful expansion to the previous generation of Ultra devices, now dubbed Ultra Edition II. The appearance of such products isn't accidental, since the Ultra I series enjoyed enormously high sales. The second series became even more popular - in particular the U600/U700 models have been selling in thousands since their release. This year, Samsung yields a small but impressive boost to the Ultra family. Unlike the previous Barcelona event, where a total of four Ultra II phones were announced at the same time, this February only the new line leader was admitted to the public. This gives ground to guesses what other Ultra II phones will be announced at CeBIT 2008. It's speculated that presenting a number of Ultra II products at once would detract the consumer attention from U900 Soul and weaken its advertising effect.

U900 Soul

The poetical title of Soul is but an abbreviation standing for Spirit of Ultra. Samsung market strategists know for sure that the very first thing in a phone is its name. The Soul title is meant to underline the supreme position of this handset within the whole product family.

The company employed a number of impressive features to power this phone. First comes the very unusual design sporting a combination of metal and plastic. Secondly, there come a number of innovations like the touchpad replacing the navigation button. This is called Magic Touch by DaCP. Depending on the phone function actively in use, a different set of control elements are displayed on the touchpad. For example, when you launch the music player the regular menu controls are instantly replaced with the player control symbols. The interface is highly customizable, the user is free to play with the desktop wallpapers, themes and so on. The third major point is the 5 Mp auto-focusing camera. However, the imaging side of this phone is especially reinforced in addition to the usually good camera capabilities of the 5 Mp phones by Samsung. There's an image stabilizer available, the Face Detection function is in just like if it were a conventional digital camera, the Wide Dynamic Range technology allows for increased ISO sensibility.

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Samsung Soul seen in action. The phone is equipped with the traditional ICEPower audio unit by B&O. The Soul device is able of a fifteen-hour-long music playback cycle without recharging. The screen size is 2.2'' with an effective resolution of 320x240 capable of rendering 16M colors. The overall dimensions are surprisingly modest for a phone with a powerful camera like that: 105.9x49.5x12.9 mm.

Soul is an all-in-one solution just like Nokia N82/N95, yet the variety of functions is not as impressive as in Nokia products - however its design imbued with the Spirit of Ultra and the touchpad controls give it a serious market impetus.

Samsung F480

Samsung F480 is another model worthy of the closest attention. Among its selling points is a 2.8'' touchscreen with a resolution of 240x320. This is the second model by the Asian company which is equipped with this type of screen, the pioneer being Samsung P520 Armani. The new announce was an adequate response to LG beating Samsung by releasing LG Prada, which enjoyed more public attention because of a more powerful and recognizable brand and an earlier release. Then came LG KU990 which clearly outpaced P520 Armani in all senses, so Samsung had to do something about that. Samsung F480 is in fact a challenge to LG KU990. The difference from F490 is minimal, curiously. A choice between P420, F480 and F490 is still a very obscure matter. The 5 Mp camera with a powerful flash is the only remarkable strong point of this model, accompanied by such extras as the image stabilization unit and the Face Detection feature. The physical dimensions are 95.9x55x11.5 mm, it supports GMS 900/1800/1900 networks, WCDMA 2100 and EDGE.

Samsung G810

The most characteristic specimen of the Infotainment series is the G810 model. Its most remarkable feature is the Symbian OS on board. This may be regarded as an attempt to oust out Nokia N95 from its throne, which has been long enjoying the status of the best all-in-one solution. Now Samsung uses Nokia's own weapon to strike back. The phone, just as its class suggest, comes with a vast number of supported features and a lot of preinstalled applications. The camera module is boosted with an optical zoom capability (!), the GPS module sits right in its place, being a necessary demand of time. The Garmin company is responsible for providing the geographical service backup, the software used for GPS navigation belongs to the Navigon brand. The same solutions are used in the other GPS model by Samsung - i780. The screen size is based on a 2.6'' matrix (240x320) with a 262K color palette. Quite expectedly the phone supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, MicroSD cards, has a 3.5 mm standard headset jack and a TV-out. These are close to becoming a must for any decent phone. The phone is powered by a 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery. The preinstalled software, as well as the bulk of features, have much in common with Nokia N95, save for a few applications native to Samsung products. The dimensions are 103x53x22 mm, the phone weighs 139. It's expected to start selling by the beginning of the second quarter at a price of 600 euros.

Samsung F400

This one is a double slider. Once you lift the face panel up, you see a numerical keypad. Lifting the other panel down gets you to a pair of stereo speakers. The model was developed in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen. It employs trademark B&O speakers with ICEamp support. To a large scale the audio capabilities of the model owe to this sound system, being on the other hand the most important selling point for this handset. The rest of the features include a QVGA screen, a 3 Mp camera, an FM tuner, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD card slot and USB 2.0. This model will be of interest to the music lovers, it's expected to enter the market in the second quarter at a price of 400 euros. Such a high price is explained by the collaboration with a top-ranking producer of hi-end audio software. However, it's arguable whether such an explanation will be enough of an excuse for the model to become popular with a large audience.

Samsung E251

A rather peculiar handset destined to become a mass model. The price won't exceed 130 euros. An inexpensive phone with an VGA camera and an FM radio module that's launched with a dedicated button.

Samsung L760

This model was announced in the last year, so it's only mentioned in this article to give a better overview of Samsung's new strategy. The Connected class affiliation means that the device's primary function is providing its owner with a maximum of web-related possibilities and functions. The key selling point of this device is that it brings an unmatched comfort in web browsing, blogging, e-mailing and so on. Something totally new to this kind of products is the exclusive software for handling RSS feeds and watching YouTube videos. The web services are becoming of more and more importance to Samsung, so we're sure this phone is but a pioneer finding ways for future Samsung expansion onto this field. Of course, Nokia Ovi will clearly be leading for some more time, but Samsung's first step is quite impressive. In addition to new models, a number of new technologies are expected to appear as part of Samsung's Connected brand.

Samsung B100

The Basic class leaves little to be expected. This is but an inexpensive casual handset that will enter the market in the first quarter of 2008 at a price of 65-75 euro. It comprises a classical form factor, an STN screen (65K colors, 128x128) and 2 Mb of memory reserved for storing ringtones. The phone supports Bluetooth, GPRS and features a wap browser v1.2.

Samsung i780

The next Windows Mobile communicator by Samsung is another attempt at winning steady positions on the market and at the same time a good try at designing yet another ultra slim handset. The design reveals Samsung's intention to be manifest presence in every mentionable market segment. The device belongs to the Business category, is equipped with a QWERTY keyboard and is aggressively marketed towards corporative clients. The OS type used is Windows Mobile 6 Professional. The PDA phone is powered by the Marvell PXA3xx CPU. The main connectivity features include Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and Wi-Fi. The screen matrix is capable of rendering 65K colors at a resolution of 320x320 pixels. A 2 Mp camera module is quite unimpressive because of the lack of quality. The device is powered by a 1000 mAh Li-Ion battery. The device size is 116x62x15 mm, the weight is 125 g.